Massachusetts Cannabis Chefs Joseph Nelson and Patrick Mulcahy started hosting infused dinner parties the day cannabis became recreationally legal in Massachusetts in December 2016 and utilize a sponsor to provide their “gifts.”

Tara Sue Sharp dotes over a skillet of mushrooms. She sips a cannabis oil-infused mocktail as she readies a meal for a small group of guests.

Even though Sharpe has cooked these farm-to-table mushroom tostadas dozens of times before, she’s extra careful now as she adds the key ingredient: a tablespoon of homemade cannabis oil slowly drizzled over over the already-simmering vegetables.

One of the first things budding cannabis enthusiasts will notice is that all weed is essentially divided into two distinct groups: Indica and Sativa.

Both are members of the same species of plant, though the scientific name applicable to all of them, confusingly, is Cannabis Sativa L (the “L” stands for Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who was responsible for giving cannabis the name Sativa).

While current cannabis science suggests that the difference between cannabis strains is no longer as simple as Indica vs Sativa, most people still identify their cannabis using these terms.

Sativa strains, including the Haze family of strains, are generally thought to be more stimulating and accomplishment-oriented than Indica.

By the end of this semester’s inaugural class of “Horticulture of Cannabis: From Seed to Harvest,” more than 300 students will understand why cannabis growers would want to keep their young plants from flowering, how to pull that off and most everything else about the prime conditions of cultivating hemp.

In a greenhouse at the bottom of Horsebarn Hill, a few plants stand much taller than the rest, the tops of their green, dissected leaves tickling the grow lights that feed them 18 hours of “sunshine” per day.

That still wasn’t enough for these hemp plants, which started to flower despite researchers’ best efforts to keep them “vegging out,” or growing in a vegetative state.

In the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Port Richmond, Jessica Wolfert (26) is a Renaissance woman fusing the realms of glass-blowing and cannabis into her body positivity project Lady Pipes.

The glass smoking pipes are an ode to Wolfert’s younger self: a suburban girl from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who once struggled with social anxiety and body image issues.

“When my social anxiety was at its worst I was terrified of being judged,” Wolfert tells High Times. “I wanted to physically disappear, and I think that negatively affected the way I viewed and treated my body.”

“Prior to Aspirin, marijuana was one of the only effective painkillers. So you can imagine how popular it was as an additive.”

The legal history of medical cannabis is complicated, to say the least.

Today, medical cannabis is legalized to some degree in all but three states (Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota).

But the story of medical cannabis in America does not begin in 1996, when California became the first state to legalize medicinal use. Medical cannabis has a long history in the US, with common usage dating back to the 19th century.

Firmly established in the U.K and Dutch scenes as a purveyor of the finest cannabis genetics on the planet, High Times sat down with OJ from Amsterdam-based Connoisseur Genetics.

Producing close to one million feminized seeds per year, we talk to him about the breeding scene, his influences, genetics, how he crafts his seeds, and what his top tips are when it comes to making a consistent, reliable, and delicious end product.

The group’s mission statement champions female empowerment and the normalization of cannabis.

In an era when everyone is glued to their phones — clicking, liking, rarely looking up — sharing cannabis is a simple way to connect in real life.

It encourages you to pop your screen into your pocket, ease your tech neck, breathe, and savor the present moment.

So, on a sunny afternoon in December, I was really looking forward to unplugging from virtual social networks, getting high, and instead plugging into a real network at Glitter & Gold, an all women's affair, hosted by Tokeatvity.

In Canada, the first holiday season post-legalization has opened up a social minefield for those unsure how their use will be perceived and for others uneasy about acknowledging a new era, says one cannabis observer.

Reena Rampersad doesn't hide her love of weed, but she's discreet when socializing with people she knows are not regular users.

The Hamilton resident is mindful that many people still do not approve of recreational use, even though it's now legal.

That disparity is glaring when she goes out for dinner at a nice restaurant and still feels compelled to sneak around.

Let’s be completely honest, the gift that a cannabis lover really wants is cannabis. But, in general, stoners do have preferences, and buying a joint for a real lover of bud can be like getting a fancy bottle of wine for a connoisseur.

You don’t want to end up with the wrong strain or grower.

In the end, it’s often easier to help them up their usage and appreciation game by getting them a weed-adjacent present.

Aesthetics play a significant role in how cannabis products are received by first-time users as the pace of legalization picks up speed in North America.

Sophisticated, unexpected and elegant designs will allow companies to disassociate themselves from the stigma traditionally attached to cannabis consumption, securing new consumers among both habitual users and the canna-curious.

Until recently, the design of cannabis accessories was of questionable quality.

SCROG, short for “screen of green,” is an indoor cannabis training technique. There are many different techniques that help indoor growers maximize their space, but scrogging is one of the most popular.

SCROG is a training technique that helps indoor cannabis cultivators maximize their light usage and the number of top buds, or colas, their plants produce.

If you leave a single plant in a pot to grow without training, chances are it will develop just one central cola.

With SCROG, however, every branch develops into a decent-sized cola. This coaxes out high yields from as few as one to five plants.

There’s something deeply satisfying about getting high and drooling over images of a gorgeous, marijuana-infused dinner — and a new crop of shows offer a look into how these intoxicating feasts are made.

Take Viceland’s Bong Appétit, by far the biggest hit of the genre. Last year, it was nominated for a James Beard award, a top honor in the cooking world.

The first two seasons featured dreamy sequences about sourcing local ingredients, bite-sized lessons in how to infuse various fats and oils with marijuana and, at the end of each episode, a giggle-ridden dinner party populated by the kind of chill stoners who would never judge you for being too high.

Plants, just like humans, need a well-rounded variety of foods to live happy and healthy lives. Cannabis plants are no exception, needing a wide range of nutrients to develop fragrant buds which burn cleanly.

There are two basic kinds of nutrients. There are mineral nutrients, which are naturally found in soil and can usually last a few weeks before they need to be replenished by the grower (though supplementing these nutrients can help the plant grow faster).

These nutrients can be supplemented after a soil test using store-bought fertilizers and nutrient solutions.

It may have started with Reefer Madness in 1939, which created an initial scare about the dangers of cannabis use.

Skip ahead four decades to the slack-jawed ramblings of Cheech and Chong, followed by such films as Friday, Half Baked and Pineapple Express, and cannabis in motion pictures became a caricature of mislabeled stereotypes.

When your doctor reminds you to be sure to eat your greens, the recommendation probably doesn’t include cannabis plants. But maybe it should.

“(Cannabis) makes me feel about 10 years younger. It gives me energy, just amazing energy,” said Pam Dyer, a Spokane-area medical marijuana patient, health blogger and a founder of the Eastern Washington chapter of Women of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana).

Since becoming a medical marijuana patient about seven years ago, Dyer has been experimenting with ways to eat the parts of the marijuana plant that don’t have psychotropic effects. This includes turning stalks and leaves into tasty smoothies.

It’s been a little over a year since singer, activist and marijuana entrepreneur Melissa Etheridge was arrested for cannabis possession by federal agents in North Dakota near the U.S.-Canada border.

Her tour bus was stopped and searched shortly after touring in Alberta, and agents discovered a vape pen containing cannabis oil.

Etheridge, who’s become an outspoken advocate for legalization in the years since she started using the plant medicinally after being diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40s, told Marijuana Moment in a new interview that the experience of being busted did not deter her.

Rather, it has motivated her to continue advocating for patients and spreading the word about marijuana’s therapeutic potential.

Using cannabis-infused butter or oil to make your edibles is easy. But using a tincture simplifies things even more.

The dropper makes it super convenient and easy to measure doses, whether you want a microdose or melt-your-face-off experience.

All you need to do is read the label on your product and dose your meal based on how you want to feel. Unlike infused butter and oils, however, tinctures should not be cooked because the heat will destroy the cannabinoids.

There are two flights of stairs curling around the head-turning glass bong, all 24 feet of it. There also will be an elevator to ferry people from the ground floor — where the pipe’s 100-gallon reservoir sits — to the mouthpiece high above.

It weighs more than 800 pounds and the bowl can pack a quarter of a pound of marijuana.

It has elements in the glass that will make it glow — greenish mostly — while bathing in black light.

Jason Harris, the artist who made it, said it’s his artistic opus to the cannabis culture. “I make giant bongs,” he said. “They are my voice to make noise in the world.”

Here’s a bold prediction: in five to ten years, everyone will be using hash like a seasoning, sprinkling half-grams of full-melt into soups and stews, adding un-pressed cannabis trichomes to smoothies, sauces, and desserts … the sky’s the limit.

Currently, using prized extracts to flavor food is seen as an extravagance, but future trends will bring hash within the reach of everyday epicureans—much like gourmet items such as truffles and saffron.

The idea of using hash as an ingredient is gaining momentum, powered by an increasingly mainstream cannabis culinary movement and made possible by a regulated market.

Now that chefs are exploring how weed might go together with their food, some are working out pairing sequences based not on how the different marijuana strains taste, but the effect they’ll likely have on their guests.

When it comes to critiquing alcoholic beverages, most of the focus is on how it tastes.

Sometime color comes into play, or body or texture, and not infrequently a drink’s history makes it into a review, but what critics don’t tend to write about is what kind of drunk it gets you.

That might be because, despite anecdotal evidence that tequila makes you wild and red wine makes you sleepy and whiskey makes you belligerent, scientists insist that ethanol is ethanol and drunk is drunk.

As states continue to legalize, cannabis-based edibles and spa treatments are ready and waiting for you on your next visit to a luxury hotel or resort.

More hotels and resorts plan to offer cannabis-based menu items and wellness treatments, as laws around the country relax toward medicinal and recreational use of the drug.

And customers — both locals and guests — seem to be thoroughly enjoying them.

Jessica Schupack, a Los Angeles resident who works in marketing is a regular at the Hollywood Roosevelt, where she loves ordering the mojito ($18) infused with cannabidiol (CBD), a nonintoxicating compound found in the cannabis plant.

Leave it to California to combine high-end cuisine with the kind of ingredients that might actually get you high.

It's an increasingly lucrative niche for chefs in San Francisco and Los Angeles — cities already well known for trendy food culture.

Chefs and entrepreneurs making cannabis-infused foie gras and "stoner souffles" have been featured on not one but two series devoted to gourmet ganja: the Netflix competition program, Cooking On High, and the Viceland show Bong Appetit.

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